A funny production with a sharp ensembleMaria Montague

The powerful and neurotic Mr and Mrs Smith invite the Martins, the quiet couple with a dark side, over for a dinner party. What sounds like the beginning of an English dinner party drama is anything but what you’d expect; in fact this theatre of the absurd piece is mostly performed in French! 

Written by Playwright Ionesco when learning English, The Bald Prima Donna is a play centred on failure to communicate and as communication breaks down the play descends into chaos, resulting in husband and wives no longer recognising each other and the arrival of the fire chief without the presence of a fire. However there is method in the madness as the play is pitched by Ionesco as a “satire of everything”. “It’s like a language text book brought to life and it pokes fun at all the ridiculous forced dialogue and vocabulary that people rarely use in conversation” director Maria Montague explains.  Adding to this cast member Andreea Tudose commented that the Bald Prima Donna is a play which “gets behind the madness, exposing ridiculous social norms and unspoken rules that we don’t think to question”.   

Despite being performed mostly in French (with a bit of English and a few other languages thrown in for good measure), Montague assures that language will not be an obstacle for the audience in accessing the play as even French speakers will need to read the surtitles to catch the language based comedy. Yet the comedy runs beyond the language of the play and is infused in the energetic physicality and stylistic facial expressions of the cast who have taken on this challenge. 

They are certainly a brave cast, absurdist theatre can be difficult enough to actualise without the added challenge of doing it in another language! While some of the cast are fluent French speakers, many are still learning and Jess Peet for example, has tasked herself with resurrecting A Level knowledge from four years ago.  Luckily they’ve had a long rehearsal period from the beginning of term to get up to scratch! Speaking about the rehearsal process Louise Aryton declared that they had been fun and the less time pressured schedule has given the team time to experiment with the piece. Director Maria Montague has also been experimenting with including some music in the production and compositions have been written especially for it, giving an entirely new element to the performance of the play. 

The Bald Prima Donna certainly appears to be a unique project and has promise to be a creative, clever and funny production performed by a sharp ensemble.